Waking Night
by Anera527
Summary: It is Ellie Miller's darkest hour. She really is the guilty one this time, and this time she faces it alone. Post S2


" _ **Waking Night"**_

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" _I keep so much pain inside myself. I grasp my anger and loneliness and hold it in my chest. It has changed me into something I never meant to be. It has transformed me into a person I do not recognize. But I do not know how to let it go."_

 _-_ S.J.B.

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Despite being in the police force for the past fifteen years of her life, Ellie Miller had never realized how cold a jail cell was. The concrete and stone used to build a prison's walls retained little heat; even seated on the soft cloth of her bed she felt the frigid chill of her latest home spread throughout her core, icing over her bones and freezing her blood. She hadn't been comfortably warm in weeks.

The shiver down her spine today was not from the cold, however; that she couldn't delude herself on. Her heart was pounding hard and fast and choking in her throat and her stomach was roiling. (She had refused the standard meal from the warden this morning, but she still felt like she was going to be sick.)

This was the morning she would receive her sentencing.

This was, finally, her judgment day.

"Visitor for you, Ms. Miller." The warden's voice was soft and almost kind as it always was for her. She had quickly learned to avoid looking at the man's face so she didn't have to see the expression of deep pity he often wore while around her.

She knew who had come to see her. She stood with a roll of her eyes meant only for herself and approached the open jail cell door. Even today of all days he wouldn't let her alone.

Part of her, a part untroubled by the physical cold of stone, was warmed by the thought. The rest, however, was dismayed—even fearful—of it as she was led down the clean, white hallway and through a second door, and then a third door, and finally there he was seated alone amidst the sea of tables for visitations.

The warden sat her down on the opposite side of the table. "Five minutes only," he warned them both. Needlessly, of course—this was a familiar tune they played to more often than not. And then the warden was leaving with the two of them seated almost awkwardly together.

Ellie squirmed in her seat, knocking her knees together. The bastard was going to make her speak first. "Hardy."

Alec caught her gaze and held it. Almost a challenge. An appraisal to see if anything had changed since the last time he'd seen her. "Miller." His tone held no apology for the use of her detested last name.

He was in full detective inspector mode, then. Okay.

"What excuse did you come up with this time, then, coming to see me?" It was said more sharply than she'd intended. It almost made her flinch.

It set him, already tense, on edge. "It was either me," he retorted, and his brogue was rough with his irritation, "or your nephew with a recorder." His evident dislike of Oliver Stevens had not lessened with time.

Ellie felt her stomach drop despite itself. She had been prepared to hear about her nephew's ever-more-fierce ambitions in the world of journalism but hearing that he was willing to take this as his latest scoop was more than a knock to her gut. It was a betrayal. "How did you convince him not to come?" she asked weakly.

His dark eyes were cool. Icy. It was by that fact that Ellie knew he was furious. "I informed him that if he so much as breathed a word about today's sentencing I would call in every favor I have to make the rest of his life a living hell."

He meant it, too. Ellie had never found out just how many 'favors' Alec Hardy had had built up with nearly twenty years on the force but they were probably more than her nephew's age. She almost breathed a sigh of relief.

He moved then, shifting in his seat just as she was preparing to speak again. "I was asked," he told her gruffly, uncomfortable, "to give this to you." He pulled a folded up piece of paper from his jacket pocket and handed it over.

Ellie tentatively took and opened it and felt a rush of hot tears suddenly well up. It was a child's crude drawing of a stick figure labelled 'mummy' that was holding onto a smaller stick figure called 'me'. Flowers were scattered around the bottom of the picture and a crooked house stood in the background. It was labelled, simply, 'Home'. "Fred," she choked out, gripping the paper tight. She looked back up at Alec. "How are they, Hardy? My boys?"

He straightened. His eyes had softened but not with kindness. "There's still talk about removing them from Lucy's care."

It was the second blow of the conversation, and she was sure it would not be the last. "But she's legally able to take them, she's their blood relation—"

"And she's only been sober for six months, Miller," Alec interrupted her bluntly. "You know how the courts view that." She couldn't reply to that; her tongue felt glued to the roof of her mouth. He sighed. "Beth has been fighting to take them under her own roof but I'm not sure how she'll win."

She was going to lose her boys. Possibly forever. She fell against the back of her chair, the air punched from her lungs as it became suddenly very clear just what she had spelled for her family those two months ago. She couldn't breathe. Her hands were shaking and she sat on them to make them stop.

Alec, perceptive as he was, noticed that but wisely didn't comment. He breathed in sharply through his nose and sat back as well, the tips of his fingers tapping gently at the edge of the table. He could see minute differences in her appearance, lines at the corners of her mouth and she had lost a bit of weight. He would offer to take Tom and Fred himself if he could but he was still fighting for Daisy, and just as the courts would look suspiciously at Lucy they would look equally so at him for having been Ellie's partner during Danny's case and the unofficial closing of Sandbrook.

"Why did you kill him, Miller?" The question slipped out easily; it had been the one he had been wanting to ask since receiving that phone call two months ago.

Ellie heard his inquiry but it took a moment for the words to register. She flinched.

" _You mean, do I still fantasize about beating him with a hammer until he's dead? And do I daydream about that while I'm making toast? Then thinking how often I'd hit him before wiping the blood and the brains off the hammer?"_

"After finding out about Tess's affair," she said softly, "did you feel like you wanted to kill her?"

He should have expected that she would answer with a similar question. He answered honestly. "In the initial moment, I think so," he admitted.

He had shut down following that moment, however; he had shoved all of his anger and shame and guilt and had run. Sandbrook was solved, but the mental and emotional damage caused by it was far from healed. It never would be.

Ellie had gone to the therapist enough that she had seen an incline in her own black hole. She had her sons, at least. She had the hope that her bastard of a husband would be charged with Danny's murder.

But she had been alone, then. Angry. Confused. Bitter. It had caused damage. She had learned to nurse those feelings. There is no living with them. There's only festering.

"He went after Fred." The explanation was small, soft. She was hunched over. "He tried to take Fred. I had already warned him of what I would do if he tried to come back."

"I know. I talked to Beth after it happened." His eyes were sharp again. "She was surprisingly forthcoming with the information." He glanced at the clock, noting the time they had left together. It was not anger sharpening his eyes. She didn't quite know what it was until he spoke again. "You could plead insanity, Miller."

She nearly goggled at him, utterly taken aback; she felt the pit in her stomach tighten painfully. She swallowed down the lump in her throat. "I can't."

He leaned forward. "Miller, if you plead guilty it could be for life. Twenty years, at _minimum_." His accent grated on the last word, only emphasizing the stress he put on it. There was true desperation there in the depths of his eyes, in the twitch of his hands as he gripped the edge of the table. It was there in the tone of his voice as he begged her to reconsider. "Please, Miller. You won't be able to see your sons. They'll be taken by the courts."

"I killed him," she protested weakly, shaking her head. "I have to face the consequences. I told him that, too."

"Bullshit," he snarled. "You've felt guilty about missing Joe's actions since it happened. You're looking to be punished for something that started outside of your control."

He knew her too well. But that could easily be turned around on him. "That's a bit rich, coming from you," she retorted, and although it was a response that caused his own flinch he was heartened to see she still had the same fire, "or have you forgotten the entire case of Sandbrook you were obsessed over for two years?"

"This isn't just a case I'm asking your help with, Miller!" he exclaimed. "You are being charged with the murder of a man, and this time there's nothing I can do to help you."

The admission was the true reason he was so upset. As soon as she heard his last words she knew—they made too much sense considering his actions in the past.

The realization made her smile weakly at him. Weakly, yes, but it was genuine. "I'm sorry it took me so long to understand you, Alec," she said quietly. "You were always trying to look out for my best interests, weren't you?"

The anger from a moment ago was gone. The desperation was not. He ran his hands down his face. "I tried." He had not lowered his hands. She was afraid of what she would see if he did. "I failed."

"Don't you dare," she warned him. "Don't you dare try to blame yourself for this, Hardy. I did this. I killed him. You had nothing to do with this. I don't want to see you beating yourself up over what happens today. You have your daughter to worry about. Don't lose her."

He nodded, his interlaced fingers still hiding his face from her. Then finally he shifted again and his hands fell away. The warden was coming back; their time was up. "Take care of yourself, Miller."

She stood. "You too." She grabbed the picture from the table where she had dropped it, and then on an impulse reached across the table and gripped his fingers in her own. He glanced up at her, startled, and she was pleased to know that _she_ had finally thrown _him_ for a loop this time, even if it was only a small one. "Thank you."

He did nothing for a long moment; then he nodded and his hand squeezed hers. He didn't speak, unable to give an appropriate response to that, but she didn't mind. He had already said what needed to be. If his eyes were suspiciously bright as she was led away she didn't comment on it.

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The court, when she was let into the booth, was packed with both police officers and several of Broadchurch's citizens. Beth and Mark were seated in plain view, Paul behind them, and Nigel Carter looking worriedly from the corner. Lucy sat with Tom, clearly gripping his hand in her own as they both looked at her. Maggie was with Olly but Ellie almost smiled to see that her nephew sat ramrod in his seat with no phone or writing pen in sight. Hardy sat on the other side of Beth (being an outsider on this charge he was merely a citizen looking on, which she could tell by his expression was an odd feeling.)

The judge called for order and she was asked to stand.

"Ellie Marie Miller, you have been charged with the murder of your husband, Joseph Michael Miller on the 18th of August, 2015. Do you plead guilty, or not guilty?"

Beth's eyes were pleading, asking her to say not guilty so that she could perhaps have a chance of getting off. Mark was biting at his lip. It was a surreal turn of events. She almost lost her nerve.

But the yawning darkness in her soul was still there; the loneliness and pain of the past year and a few months was asking for judgment. It had made her into someone she no longer knew. She studiously looked away from Hardy's carefully-neutral face. She did not regret killing Joe. She had protected her sons; he had not taken her seriously and so he had paid the price.

But she had only proven what Hardy had told her all those months ago: _"Anybody is capable of murder, it just takes the right circumstances."_ It felt something of a defeat to have only compounded those words with evidence.

There was only one thing she could do now. The only right choice. She carefully buried her fear and guilt beneath a calm, collected mask feeling those several pairs of eyes all on her and spoke aloud her own fate.

"Guilty."

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 _And they're burying all of the evidence  
My glamourous words will catch them  
Burying all of the evidence  
Some thousands of eyes are watching_

 _-_ "Circadian", Falling Up


End file.
